


(We Can't) Exit Interviews

by Bodldops



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Assistants are like ready-meals for the Beholding, Benefits not mentioned in the hire paperwork, Canon-Typical Worms (The Magnus Archives), Season 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26208574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodldops/pseuds/Bodldops
Summary: While Elias has his main chess pieces in play, they are still playing in a world that requires quite a number of support staff.  The Powers weren't supposed to leave them alone, were they?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 23
Collections: Rusty Quill Big Bang 2020





	(We Can't) Exit Interviews

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the mods for setting this awesome challenge up, and thank you to Picc for some truly amazing artwork [here](https://paintbrushinacoffeecup.tumblr.com/post/627910707250397184/not-just-the-little-silver-worms-that-everyone)! Fair warning for canon-typical anxiety and persecution of assistants.

Charlie sincerely hoped that whoever neglected to have the temperature and humidity controls kept up to date in this facility died. He hoped they died slowly, and knew it was for their sins. Not only were the controls practically archaic, the wiring wasn’t even remotely up to code, and to top it all off, there was a bug problem. Not just the little silver worms that everyone had started noticing on the way into the Institute, but moths and roaches and… and spiders, which were the worst of all. He knew it was to be expected – with all the other creepy-crawlies down here, spiders were sure to follow, but… ugh. It just made running new wire even less fun, knowing there might be something with too many legs and too many eyes just waiting to scuttle out from the dark places.

He’d been hired as a sort of fix-it guy, though he knew now that he should have been suspicious when they’d been so very interested in his licenses in electrical work. He’d been looking for a less labor-intensive job, and working for a kinda kooky research facility seemed like it – what could they need, after all? A few light fixtures repaired, maybe some plumbing fixes?

Yeah, that dream had gone up in smoke. Not at first, mind. At first, it’d been pretty much what he’d thought it’d be. There were some places he wasn’t allowed to go, which he sort of expected – a place that sold itself as a warehouse of all things creepy needed at least one locked room where those not in the know were told to stay away. But the rest was all standard – an archive in the basement (kept in utter disarray by an old lady he barely ever saw, since she never actually sent him any requests for service), a more neat library on the main floor, with rooms for people to come in and write down their creepy experiences, and offices up above for administrators and the like. He generally stayed out of everyone’s way, fixed things as they needed fixing, and tried not to spend too much of his paycheck on the ponies.

And then the old lady disappeared. Died, from what rumor he could garner, but no one seemed to know exactly when, or what of. Not entirely unexpected, but still. Folk were sad, but no one was exactly prostrate with grief – she’d kept mostly to herself, working nearly alone down in the archives, so the only real hole in day-to-day events was the pile of statements that was growing down in the archives with no one to sort them.

  
Then this new guy was hired. Well, not a new guy, really, one of the researchers from the library. Evidently it caused a bit of a stir, as everyone thought one of the other researchers was a shoo-in for the job, and she’d been passed over for this other guy. This other guy who had ideas and had immediately sent Charlie a list as long as his arm of things that needed updating and fixing down in the archives.

  
A plan that included, amongst other things, installing a state-of-the-art environmental control unit for heat and humidity and a dozen other things Charlie wasn’t entirely sure could even be controlled for. The head boss, Bouchard, had signed off on it without even a second to think about it. Charlie hadn’t been so busy in all his life. He couldn’t fault the new guy for wanting everything updated – it was, after all, beyond due. He just wasn’t at all pleased to be the one who had to do it all. None of it was involved enough to need outside help, tragically, but it seemed just when he got one system up and running, something else started showing its impressively geriatric age.

Grumbling, he checked the power on yet another outlet before taking off the plate. He had a plan for today – fix the wiring in this section, get it hooked up to the new climate control, and call it a night. Day. Whatever. It was still hard to wrap his head around terminology when he’d switched to overnights to try and get the work done when he didn’t have to trip over staff every five minutes. Everyone just wanted to be helpful, he knew, but if he had to do all this rewiring and listen to literally everyone in the building natter on about politics or the weather or whatever else tickled their fancy, he was never going to get back to his original plan of doing absolutely as little as possible for as long as possible.

Lord, he missed Gertrude Robinson. Crazy old bird, but barely sent up any requests.

The last screw came loose and the plate fell with a clatter before he could catch it, loud in the confined space. Louder still was his scream when something with a striped fuzzy body and entirely too many legs erupted from the space behind, almost directly into Charlie’s face. Charlie reared back in a blind panic, fingers scrambling belatedly for purchase on his ladder and finding only empty air. He fell, knowing there was only cold concrete below, that it would be hours before anyone found him.

He fell into the warmth of another body, one that startled and screamed just as loud as he was at the sudden intrusion, and they both tumbled to the floor. Charlie’s first semi-rational thought, once he realized he wasn’t dead, is there was a lot of skin going on. Like…

“Why are you naked?” He demanded of the man who accidentally saved his life. The man, pale with shadows under his eyes from too little sleep, blinked at the question.

“I’m not, I have… anyway, why are you even here?” The man demanded in return, and… to be fair, there were some boxers going on to maintain a thin veil of modesty, but that almost created more questions than it answered.

“Why am I here, why are you here? I work here!”

“I do too!”

“You… wait, what?” Charlie broke the cycle of shouting and realized very belatedly that he was still practically in a naked man’s lap. And he also had no idea where the spider was. He scrambled to his feet, casting a wary eye around himself.

“Ah… yeah, I’m Martin… Martin Blackwood? I’m one of the Archival assistants?” His erstwhile savior seemed almost unsure that this was a good enough reason to be down here. Charlie agreed with that assessment – what were they doing down here in the archives that required… so very little clothing?

“Charlie Troud, maintenance. So…” He paused, and then waved a hand at all of… all of the Martin that was going on before him. Charlie immediately found out that when Martin blushed, he did so fairly impressively, being as pale as he was.

“Sorry, my boss is letting me stay here after… well, there was an attack? And since you need security clearance to get into the building, he thought this’d be safer, and I didn’t think anyone would be down here overnight, and I was just getting some water…” The flow of words was almost overwhelming, and Charlie held up his hands to try and stem it.

“Hey man, it’s… it’s fine, I mean, at least you were here to keep me from cracking my skull open, yeah?” Charlie didn’t know what kind of crazy person would be enough of a threat to a guy as big as Martin to make him hide out in the Archives of all places, but figured he didn’t need to make the guy apologize for having that sort of lunacy in his life. “Real embarrassing to die because I was afraid of a spider.”

“What?” Martin held up a hand when Charlie gave him a hard look. “No, I know, my boss doesn’t like them either, it’s just that I haven’t seen any down here in a while. Is it still…” Martin’s gaze tracked up the ladder, to the open outlet, and he cooed in delight when he spotted the creature. Charlie shuddered – it was just as big as he thought it was when it first burst out at him. “Oh, how gorgeous.”

“Are you actually kidding me?” Charlie demanded, while Martin rolled his eyes at what Charlie considered a very rational and considered declaration. “That thing is not gorgeous, it tried to kill me!”

“You and Jon would get on famously.” Martin snorted and started up the ladder.

“What… what are you doing, you can’t..” Charlie made an aborted move to pull Martin back down, but the man was already half-way up and evidently very determined.

“Are you just planning on sitting down there until it goes away?” Martin asked, wryly. “I’ll take it away, it’s kind of become one of my jobs, I don’t mind.” Charlie still wasn’t entirely fine with this, but there evidently was no deterring one Martin Blackwood once he got something into his head.

“Fine, do you need… you need a box, or something.” He protested and was actually laughed at for his concern. It was a nice sort of laughter, like Charlie had told a good joke, but still. Rude.

“For this guy? No, he’s a Cardinal spider, pretty harmless really. Aren’t you, gorgeous? Hey?” Martin addressed the last to the spider, once he got up to its level. “Nothing is going to electrocute me up here, is it?”

“Now he asks. No, everything except that spider is safe. You know you’re mental, right?” Charlie leaned against the ladder, not sure what to do with himself but feeling he should stick around just in case the spider took exception to Martin as well. “Completely mental. What if it jumps at you, man? You don’t know, could be a deranged spider.”

“I could leave the spider here, if you want?” Martin retorted and laughed when Charlie hurriedly backpedaled. He did actually need to get that wiring done tonight and he hadn’t magically become more okay with sharing space with something with that many legs.

“All right, come on my darling, let’s leave the nice man to finish his work. Maybe I can find you some worms to eat, wouldn’t that be nice?” Charlie did wonder a bit at the edge that worked its way into Martin’s tone at the mention of the worms, but he didn’t mention it. After all, Martin was coming back down the ladder one-handed, the other carefully cupping the spider. The creature’s legs easily spanned Martin’s palm, and Charlie backed away warily. Martin didn’t seem to notice, cooing appreciation at its beautiful pattern and telling it that it had the very best eyes, and so many of them! It was going to eat so many worms, wasn’t it?  
Absolute nutter. Couldn’t fault him on bravery though – Charlie would need a head-to-toe hazmat suit and leather gloves before he’d do something like that.

“Alright, I’ll go take this fellow off – see you around, Charlie.” Martin smiled and headed off towards the stairs, his creepy companion evidently happy to be toted about.

“Yeah, uh… see you.” Charlie stared after Martin for a long time, completely dazed. He’d just… carried it. Like nothing. While basically naked.  
Who does that?

Charlie did see Martin from time to time over the next few weeks, thankfully with more clothing on after that. Even brought him some take-away once, when he realized that the whole ‘my boss is letting me stay here’ thing was still going on, and Martin seemed highly reluctant to leave the Archives for any reason.  
A month later, when he showed up for work to find it ringed by emergency vehicles and hazmat-suited crews, and learned there had been an attack by literal worms, and that someone had been found dead… Charlie’s still not sure why he didn’t quit immediately. But he was very glad to learn that Martin had managed to get away fairly unscathed. Maybe the spider did eat up his share of the worms after all.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jenny considered herself the lynchpin holding this entire operation together. Sure, there were people who had more impressive titles, and people who certainly looked like they never left the building, but she knew in her heart of hearts that she was the one behind it all. As Mr. Bouchard’s secretary, she of course knew everything that was going to happen as soon as it was ordered, but also held a place of esteem amongst the other secretaries. She made sure she always fit the role – her boss was a fashionable man, so she made sure her outfits were on point, but never outlandish or above her station (though with some killer heels that gave her some much needed height in the intimidation game). She always had Mr. Bouchard’s correspondence organized, his schedule full but not over-packed, his memos delivered with pointed speed, and his tea served just as he settled in for the morning. She made a point to make it look effortless – she often thought of swans, gliding gracefully across the lake in aristocratic glory while paddling like mad underneath.

No one had to know she was a knife’s edge away from flying apart. That is what she told herself, and with firm repetition (and liberal dosing of caffeine and those little helpful pills she’d been taking since college), it remained true. And she took pride that no one knew, that it all looked smooth. There was power in positions like hers, because most of the day-to-day talk between the big fancy people didn’t happen in board rooms, it happened between secretaries. They were the ones that shaped the world. And it turned out, she was awfully good at doing it.

Until that Tuesday.

It’d started on a bad note, as one might expect. She’d missed her alarm, her train was late, she’d gotten mud up the side of her hose with one massively miss-judged puddle, there’d been some racist asshole ranting at the tube station… but then she was inside the Institute, with its stately frame and sweeping stairwell to the upper floor and the soothing, calm of murmuring voices and clacking computer keys and it’d be fine. It’d be all fine. She still had time to make sure Mr. Bouchard’s office was ready and…

And someone had just dumped an absolute deluge of packages all around the door to Mr. Bouchard’s office. Packages, letters, everything jumbled on top of each other and left in careless disarray. Jenny stared at it all in mute panic. If this was a normal day it’d be inconvenient, sure, but she’d have time to square it all away. Today? Today she didn’t have a prayer. Still, it’d be okay. It’d be fine. She just had to make it somewhat neat, and get Mr. Bouchard’s tea, and check her email to make sure there weren’t any schedule changes. The rest… well, she’d have to deal with the rest. But it’d be fine. A minor blip.

Someone put a fire code inspection in the schedule without asking her first. Now there were over a dozen calls that needed to be re-scheduled, because of course Mr. Bouchard would want to be available to assist in any way, and that would just take forever. Which meant she had no idea when she’d get all of this packaging undone – this couldn’t all be for Mr. Bouchard! Someone must have gotten it wrong.

No. No panicking. She’d just go get his tea, set that up, and… just do her best with the rest of it. One bad morning would not ruin everything, and it’d all seem better with some tea. Something reliable. It was fine.

It was.

She scrambled to the executive suite, in as unflustered a fashion as she could manage, her fashionable heels clicking a rapid tattoo against the marble floor. The good tea was kept there, and she had making it down to a science, so this task, at least, she could manage.

Tea-making, it turned out, was the one thing she could manage quite well today. Tea-tray in hand, she returned down the hall, a little more sedately as she re-prioritized her list for today in her mind. Perhaps she wasn’t paying as much attention as she should to her surroundings. Perhaps she was already just a little too frazzled to be carrying heavy tea trays around.

But there’d been a sound from down the hall, something loud and sharp and entirely unexpected, and she’d wobbled – worrisome with an arm full of folders, disastrous with her hands full of tray. Enough self-preservation kicked in to at least keep from spilling the entire thing on herself, but she was unable to avoid being splashed. She was definitely unable to keep the tray upright – tea and milk and sugar, shattered porcelain and ringing metal all rained down onto the marble floor.  
And Jenny just… crumpled.

There was just too much – too much wrong, too much to do, too much to fix, and now it’d all gone wrong. It was all wrong and they were going to see just how difficult it was for her to hold it together, how utterly inadequate she was for the job, how she didn’t have a chance in hell of keeping it from sliding into chaos. The walls, so spacious and airy up here on the upper level, seemed to close in, too tight, the space airless, no place to hide or get away or retreat or do anything but try to heave in useless breaths that did nothing but ache and…

And her hand was being held.

Her hand, soaked in cooling tea and sporting a now horribly chipped manicure, was being held against someone’s chest.

It was being held against someone’s chest, a chest that was vibrating with sound she could hear distantly, breathing and voice as steady as a metronome.

“… and you know I bet you could start a new fashion here, I mean, you’ve got half of these girls wearing those little collar things anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about that, hey can you give me a bit of a sign you can hear me, I mean I’m used to talking to myself as there’s hardly anyone else to talk to downstairs who sometimes. I mean Sasha only wants to hear my stories so many times and Martin is like two months old and you know, that just leaves the boss, honestly he’d have a better time of it if he spent less time freaking out and more time listening to office chatter but you didn’t hear that from me, but it looks like you might be calming down a little so that’s good, hey, there you are.” She managed to tighten her fingers around the ones holding hers. “Hey, I’m Tim, don’t know if you remember me, I’m not usually up here, but I was sent up to find some packages that were supposed to be sent down to us in the Archives. Turns out to be pretty lucky, huh?”

He had a kind voice, one that was given to laughter and jokes, that was warm and friendly and not at all anything like the crisp professionalism that was the norm up here. She liked it, even as she frowned at the memory of the jumble of packages that still awaited her.

“No wait, it’s alright, I’ll help sort this out, you’ll be fine, you’ll see, hey? Yeah, I mean, worst comes to worst I bet you haven’t take a sick day since coming in here, you could just call it a wash and be done with it, make it someone else’s mess, you know? Or maybe that’s just me.” He rattled on reassuringly until she managed to look up at him. He was a slightly rumpled man, the sort of tow-headed tousle-haired guy that could have stepped out of any college pamphlet about the joys of student life. The smile that greeted her gaze was heart-melting, most likely on accident.

“Hey, it’s going to be alright, I’ve got someone coming to clean this up, so let’s get you back to your desk, and you can have some tea while I reclaim those package for you, yeah?” Tim offered, though he didn’t seem much like he’s going to take no for an answer.

She didn’t give him a no. She gave him a watery sort of nod and let him help her to her feet.

“I…. you don’t understand, there’s so much…”

“Well, there’s the tea, and we’re fixing that, and the packages I’m sure, what else then?” He asked, cheerily confident. She explained between stuttering breaths, about the schedule, about how she wasn’t going to get that all straightened out before Mr Bouchard came in, and, embarrassingly, about swans. “It’s… impossible.”

She knew that honestly it was all minor things, but it was all about the minor things. If she couldn’t even get these simple tasks right, how was she supposed to be trusted with something more intricate? She’d heard of secretaries being thrown out for less, and Mr. Bouchard was such a particular man. Everything had to be just so, and he always seemed to know when things were about to go wrong. He’d just look at her, with that sorrowfully disappointed look, liked she’d let him down on a personal level, even as he told her to pack up and leave. And what would she do after that? Who would hire her with that sort of spot on her CV? She could feel her heart-rate kicking up again as the horrors of being unemployed and unemployable rear their heads in her imagination.

“Nonsense, you’re only saying that because no one’s managed it before.” Tim declared cheerfully, interrupting her descent into another panic attack. The phrase seemed vaguely familiar, and distractingly enough that she half-missed a phone call he made down to the archives when they reached her desk, a short wheedling bit of back-and-forth with someone named Sasha. Then he’s back, and she’s listening as he rattled on about his observations of the other people working in the Institute, offering short replies when he gives her space to work in a phrase or two. It turns out Tim Stoker (‘yeah, I know, like the vampire guy, believe me, I’ve heard all the jokes, I don’t even like Dracula’) is a very bright sort of fellow, despite his determinedly laid-back appearance. He had her tucked up in her chair with a fresh cup of tea (‘and one for the double boss, can’t forget that or he’ll find paperwork for us to do, am I right?’), not letting her lift a finger as he sorts out Mr. Bouchard’s stack of mail from the misplaced packages for the Archives. He also didn’t let her help when he organized a small army of office workers who otherwise wouldn’t have anything to do with moving packages to shift the small mountain down two flights of stairs to where they belong, somehow not managing to haul a single package himself. He also, miracle of miracles, managed to find out that one of the other secretaries had a spare blouse that is just about the right size that she could borrow for the day, to replace the one that was irreparably stained with tea. He left her with a wink and a grin before disappearing back down into the Archives before Mr. Bouchard arrived, like some sort of lackadaisical fairy godfather that knew not to overstay his welcome. When she logged back into the day’s schedule to figure how she was going to manage the mess that was today… someone had already straightened it out. The inspection had been rescheduled somehow, and there was even a few extra breaks that would be perfect to square away the remaining mail and catch up on other projects she didn’t even think she’d get to work on today.

After that, Jenny made a point to try and send some good luck in Tim’s direction when she could. Some of the good tea made it down into the Archives break room, along with a hot plate that was made this decade. She arranged for HR to ‘lose’ a few complaints made by outside companies when Tim’s ability to lie his way into other people’s information fell through. He always complimented her outfit when he saw her and included her in invitations out to the pub if there was a group going out.

When the fire alarms went off one afternoon, she’d been too busy making sure the upper floor was properly cleared and evacuated to worry too much about the archival staff – they had their own evacuation plan, and there weren’t too many people down there, it should be a breeze.  
Should be, but slowly everyone realized that while everyone from the upper two floors was accounted for besides Mr Bouchard himself, not one of the archival staff had emerged from the building.

Finally, Mr. Bouchard emerged from the Institute, just when Jenny had nearly worked herself up to a fine state of panic that somehow she’d let her boss burn to death. Then, through a swarm of EMTs she saw him – Tim, reeling and braced against another, smaller man, both bleeding and crying and horrible in a way that left her standing horrified even when they disappeared from view into a crowd of masked and gowned EMTs.

Tim had returned to the archives a month later. Jenny didn’t exactly mean to make her way down into the Archives – she had no real reason to be there, but after spending a month hearing everything from Tim quitting to Tim having a full nervous breakdown to Tim being a mutilated mess, she had to know the truth, to reassure herself that he really was fine. She found him in a little side-room off of one of the temperature-controlled storage rooms, listlessly stapling piles of loose statements together.

“Tim? Hey, can I…” She called as she knocked on the doorframe and tried to hide the way her first good look at his face was like being socked in the gut. There were wounds littered down his face and neck, all shiny and scarring. But worse than that, the quirky joy she had come to expect from him was just… gone. She knew it was unfair to expect that he’d be his ‘normal’ self after… whatever it was really happened down here, but…

“Hey.” She repeated, softer, stepping inside. For once she hated the way her heels clacked against the floor, too loud.

“No, nope, we’re not going to do that.” Tim ordered immediately, abruptly firm. There was a fire there, something… sharp, that she wasn’t expecting, and she found she had brought her hands up without meaning to. He bulldozed over her reaction. “No pity, no soft sad noises about poor Tim, hey? I’m here, I made it, it’s fine.”  
She opened her mouth to protest that it very obviously is not fine, but something in the set of his face, reminding her so much of the delicacy of a fine porcelain doll, shut her up. She didn’t come down here to hurt him.

“Do you want some tea?” She said instead, aiming for bracing and somehow hitting ‘awkwardly jovial’. They both ignore the tone, much to her relief.

“Yeah. That’d be great.”

They share a quiet tea break, uninterrupted by any of the other archival staff. Despite her best intentions, Jenny never made it down into the archives to visit Tim again.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aaron didn’t like being down in the archives. Nothing to do with the rooms themselves, or the people in them – while the shelves were a disordered wreak, that was the whole reason he was there, and the people seemed friendly enough. No, he just didn’t like the archives for the same reason that he hated having to take the Underground – the idea of that much earth, that much sheer physical mass above his head, was distractingly worrisome. Still, he had a job to do, and the faster he did it, the sooner he’d be able to leave and hopefully be assigned to some library somewhere for a while that was built above the ground like a sensible place should be. He could see why the Magnus Institute had contacted his company, however – the static shelves someone had put up sometime last century had definitely been over-run, and with the way the place was currently set up, there was no room for more storage.

That’s where he came in. He wasn’t sure if shelving could be called a ‘passion’, but he loved seeing things organized, neatly put away into clean rows until needed and called upon. The rolling shelving units, all steady on their rails and easy to maneuver, allowed for so much more room for organization. It was rewarding to see places morph from chaos into order in his wake. Sure, maybe he wasn’t saving the world, but he was making it a bit neater.

Even in horrible places like this.

The Head Archivist had looked so pleased when he’d shown up – he’d rambled on a bit about how his predecessor had evidently gone a bit loopy before she’d gone missing, creating an incomprehensible system of organization she rarely even held to, making a giant mess to sort out once she was gone. The man hadn’t been like other archivists Aaron had worked with in the past – most of them had been interested in how the shelving would help with preservation, with having adjustable shelving and sections that could be closed off to keep too many hands from touching. This guy had been mostly about making things findable, which… well, Aaron could sympathize, but it was a bit odd to hear.

Since there was so much already stuffed down here, they were replacing the shelving in sections – thirty foot rows at a time, the folders and files and boxes all hauled away, the wooden shelves knocked down and carted off to make room for their sleek new upgrades. The head of the Institute had come down for the installation of the first section – an odd man that seemed almost too polished, like a cobra gleaming in the light. Aaron did realize that was a horrible thing to think about the man that’d hired you to do a job, so he kept it well to himself.

And he said ‘they’, it was a job for ‘them’, but mostly it was him alone, calling in his coworkers once he’d laid tracks for the movable stacks and he needed help to shift the heavy blocks into place. It was a creepy place. Not because of the stories – he knows what sort of things these people are on the hunt for, but he liked that sort of thing. He was a huge fan of Ghost Hunt UK, and he sort of hoped he’d get to overhear something good.

There was, however, a sense of uneasy quiet down in the Archives. He never felt it in the rest of the building, or at least the parts he’d been in. Down amongst the scattered boxes and files, only a few people working away, there was something…

Unhappy.

Watchful.

Wary.

It was the feeling at the back of his neck, the hole deep in his gut, the way the shadows were just a little too dark.

Nonsense, of course. The way the podcasters got too worked up when camping out at abandoned hotels and the like – you stay too long somewhere kinda creepy and your mind makes it entirely too spooky for words, but…

Well. He would be glad when it was over.

He was halfway through the project when it went wrong. Even afterward, he could never say exactly what happened, because it made no sense. He was checking the bearings and locks on the stacks that had already been installed. It was no good having moveable shelving if it moved at the wrong time, or if it didn’t move when it was supposed to. So, he had a system – shift each shelf along its track a foot, lock it, and then move half-way down the stack and try to shift it back by shoving. So far everything seemed be going alright, everything as it should be. Then he turned to go back to the edge and… well. It must be there, of course it was there, it was just a trick of the light. An optical illusion. Weird, but of course the gap between stacks did not go on forever. He laughed at himself, forced himself to laugh at himself, and headed back the way he had come.

Fifteen minutes later, he couldn’t pretend it was funny.

Ten minutes after that, he finally broke down and started to run.

He went down to his knees some time after that, gasping for air, unused to running for so long (how long was it?), and still as far as he could tell he was no closer to being out of the gap. Since the shelves were empty there was no way to mark the distance, to prove he had even managed to move at all.

He turned to look down the other way – the stacks were only ten meters long, a run of any length of time should have spanned it easily, but… maybe if he went the other way. It was almost entirely heart-breaking to think about after so much effort, but... he had to do something, right? He had to. He couldn’t stay here, knelt between rows of empty shelving forever.

So he did. He lost time, walking and walking and walking and his legs ached and his feet burned and he still forced himself onward, because the edge was just a little bit further ahead, he was sure of it, it had to be.

He didn’t really remember stopping, of sitting down, but eventually he came to realize he was curled up against one side of the stacks, heels of his hands pressed against his eyes to keep from crying. He refused to cry. That was useless. Worse than useless – old scouting lessons about dehydration floated in the back of his head, scolding and warning.

At first, he didn’t realize why he’d started tracking time again, but then he heard it.

A soft, inquiring noise, only a few meters away.

He jumped, but there was only a slight man there, his greying hair giving him a false marker of age as it framed a young face, framed worried eyes. Worried eyes that locked onto Aaron’s own.

“Alright there?” The man – the head archivist, Aaron belatedly realized, the one who sounded more like a researcher than an archivist, asked with a hesitant sort of worry. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt, but I wanted to see if these were ready to be filled. I could… come back?”

Aaron had no earthly idea how this man managed to step into this timeless place, how he re-connected it to the rest of the world, but he very honestly did not care. Aaron sprang to his feet, leaping forward to grasp the archivist’s hand convulsively, shaking it with an open thankfulness that caused no small amount of alarm. And then Aaron booked it for the stairwell, the glorious stairwell with stairs that went up and reached a destination, and then a hall, a wonderful hall that passed offices each in their turn, and then a rotunda, and then a door, and then the world.

Aaron refused to go back, let one of his fellows take over the job, and felt absolutely no guilt about slacking on his duties. Sure, it was probably just a bit of a mental breakdown, a bad moment due to some stress he’d been repressing, something that most likely could happen anywhere…

But there wasn’t a paycheck high enough to tempt him back into the Magnus Institute, and he didn’t care who knew it.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Closing shift on the front desk was always a bit nerve-wracking. It shouldn’t have been, honestly. It was all museums and libraries around here, fancy hotels and fine dining. There was an underground station nearby so the commute wasn’t even onerous. Ellen had waved goodnight to her boss Rosie an hour ago, had dutifully marked when everyone clocked off and signed out for the day. And that had been fine, normal – the chatter of people suddenly released from obligation, discussing the lives they were returning to, the plans they had – it was nice, and she’d enjoyed it, really. But now…

During the day, the office wasn’t anything particularly special. The location was, of course – an old brick and limestone building that hadn’t really changed since when it was built, with an impressive stained glass dome in the rotunda that lit the room in a rainbow of colors on sunny days – and she could appreciate that. The business inside, however, was just that from where she stood – a business, with the same endlessly ringing phones and constant stream of visitors as any other. Ellen was sure it was to those really committed to it – the researchers who busily spent their time shifting back and forth between the library and whatever fact-finding missions they were sent on. Or maybe to the small staff down in the basement, keeping the archives in order.

But for her… well. One receptionist job was much like another. Answer the phones, transfer calls as needed, make sure visitors get to who they came to see or are turned away as needed. Greet your coworkers in the morning, wish them a good night in the evening, make sure the phones were rolled to the overnight answering service. Send parcels out when needed, receive parcels and make sure they arrive safely to the mail room, call up the appropriate people when proper movers arrive. This was Ellen’s fifth receptionist job, and it isn’t bad. Sure, there is an archaic and convoluted dress code, but no one seemed to be bothering to enforce it much. Sure, all sorts came in to ‘give statements’, but usually they were quiet sorts, withdrawn, happy to be taken back to the archives by one of the archival staff, and quick to leave afterwards.

There was something about the closing shift, however. The way the overhead lights seemed just a little too bright, the shadows a little too dark – even that big glass dome got a bit creepy, like a big eye staring down from up above. The way it got a little too quiet, even though she was allowed to play music on her phone after close. Sometimes it really did feel like there was someone watching, someone just out of her line of sight, a stupid yet persistent feeling she couldn’t shake. Of course there wasn’t, she knew who was in the building, she knew there weren’t any random weirdos wandering the halls behind her – there were security passes and locked doors, and the institute was small enough that everyone pretty much knew one another, if by sight if not by name. It was fine. And yet…

Yet sometimes, it seemed like things happened that were a bit too coincidental. It could just be that she was getting more absent-minded, that it was all just her. Or that she was just… unobservant, sometimes. Things like her realizing on the way home that she’d lost her oyster card, and finding it on her desk the next morning. Or spending an entire day thinking that everything on her desk had been moved just a few centimeters to the left. Or the week that she’d persistently smelled the cologne her ex-husband used to wear, even though she worked with different people throughout the week, and everyone swore they’d never even heard of the scent. And always that feeling of the hair raising at the back of her neck, like someone was watching her reactions and worse, enjoying them.

One night she got paranoid enough to actually go looking for the watcher. She’d searched the entire lobby, from front doors to the WC to the doors that went through into the main building. She even looked through the cabinet space in the receptionist desk but of course, there was no one there. Deeper in the building she could hear the hum of machinery – she’d let the cleaning crew in half an hour back, and that’d be them buffing the floors until they shone. But here, she was alone. Of course she was. Silly to get so worked up about nothing. So strange – this wasn’t her first receptionist job, not even her first one with regular closing shifts. But that back-of-the-neck feeling was still there, uncomfortable, persistent. How much was seen? Did they know she’d checked facebook earlier this afternoon? She’d just been checking a friend’s feed, they were on holiday and she hadn’t heard anything yet, just wanted to be reassured by a recent update of photos. Everyone does something like that, right? That wasn’t important. Did they know she’d rifled through the waste bins up front, collecting up recyclables and stashing them in her own bag? Nothing wrong with that, was there? She just felt it was important – sure, she knew that one person couldn’t save the whole world, but if everyone did a little bit… anyway, it’s fine. It’d just be a bit awkward to explain. She carefully pushed herself back up to her feet, closing the cabinet door.

All was quiet. Maybe that was the problem. She hunted down her phone and plugged it into her computer to get use of the bigger speakers. Soon she had Queen blasting through the lobby, and she didn’t even care a little that it was a bit predictable. Just having Freddy’s confident voice helped. Reassured, she went back to her closing list.

But…

She checked behind her again, with an anxious grimace – that weird back-of-the-neck feeling was back, and if anything the music made it worse, because she couldn’t hear if someone was behind her. Lowering the volume also didn’t help – suddenly the darkness overhead loomed, like somehow the sound had been keeping it at bay. What were they seeing? Who were they, anyway? It’s not like she had any big dark skeletons in the closet – at worst she had a parking ticket that she’d paid off ages ago, she and her wife had been open about who they were to just about everyone since they were both still in school, they didn’t even much like the party scene – they were boring, really, but it was good, gentle and quiet and all she was really looking for so what could someone possibly want, watching her?

She turned the music off all the way, to better hear, tucking her phone back into her purse. She was just being paranoid, that was all there was to it. She’d tell her wife when she got home, and they’d laugh about it before putting something light and fluffy on Netflix, and that would be all there was to tell.

Still…

She paused as she made her way testing all of the lobby doors to make sure they were locked for the night, staring out to the street beyond. It was still early enough that there were a few people, but no one looking in her direction. They were busy – a couple strolling arm-in-arm, a businessman hurrying towards the closest underground station, a skateboarder practicing jumps (probably illegally) off of a set of stairs leading down into a nearby garden. All normal. All calm.

So why did she…

“Everything all right?” The voice was smooth and calm and just a tiny bit amused, and Ellen squeaked in a way she would deny to anyone who asked later. She almost fell over from turning too fast in heels, and there behind her was her boss. Well, her boss’s boss, really, head of the entire Institute. He was an imposing figure – immensely elegant, in contrast to her own just-about-work-appropriate skirt and blouse.

“Careful now – goodness, I didn’t mean to startle you.” He tsked as he reached out a hand to steady her, and she could feel herself blushing furiously. She’d only had the job for a month now, and here she was, making a fantastic impression, she’s sure. He was impeccably dressed despite the late hour, even seeming a bit of a dandy with the jeweled earrings blinking at her in the wan overhead light. “You know, I don’t think we’ve met – I am Elias Bouchard.”

“Ah, Ellen. Ellen Marbanks, I’m, um. I’m the receptionist.” She winced, because of course she was, who else would be down here? Clearly, she was making a fantastic first impression. “I’m new?”

“Ah yes, I did hear Rosie finally filled the opening. Settling in all right?” He asked, and then raised an elegant eyebrow at her, evidently having been present long enough to catch her people-watching. “Was there a problem outside?”

“Oh! Ah, no, just… oh…” For a moment, she debated telling him about the feeling of being watched, but… well. It seemed a bit ridiculous. After all, there really was no one there. “Making sure everything’s locked up to go home, you know.”

It was an impossibly lame excuse, but Mr. Bouchard didn’t question it.

“Yes, quite. Well, I do hope you won’t have to stay too much longer, it’s getting late you know, and I’m sure you’ve had a long day.” He noted, solicitous. “Don’t worry, we’ll all have an eye out for you.”

He meant it to be reassuring, she’s sure.

She’s mostly sure.

She wasn’t reassured, even a tiny bit.

When the fire alarm goes off months later, her first thought it is it part of a drill. Everyone has heard the Head Archivist’s rants about ignition sources in the building, so there couldn’t possibly be a real fire. But Rosie wasn’t about to let them take it any less than completely seriously, so they stood by the doors, checking in with each area captain as their part of the building was emptied, then following Rosie out to hand their clipboards over to emergency services, those left in the building clearly marked – the entire Archival staff, and the Head of the Institute, all missing.

Then the stories started – the ones from the library, from artifact storage, about hearing strange noises, shouting, screaming. About one of the archival assistants, Miss James, shouting something about worms.

When Mr. Bouchard emerged from the building, he was brushing cobwebs from his coat, looking more rumpled than she’d ever seen him before. Before the wave of emergency personnel surrounded him, he looked up… and winked.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
She was going to die here.

Martha knew that now, with all of her heart, crouched futilely with her notes lying scattered around her feet. Her arms were wrapped over her head, as if they could protect her from what was coming out of the dark, as if the small space under them would somehow form a safe haven, as if there were some hope of surviving this at all.

They’d been warned, of course. Artifact Storage was dangerous, they said. Follow all protocols to the letter, even if they seem ridiculous, they said. But nothing ever came of anything – going through the checklists had become a bit of a joke, something that seemed like a scene out of one of those ghost-hunting shows. Beyond that, if she’d waited it wouldn’t be until after the weekend that she’d be able to finish this project of studying the Rusted Chair, and she was so ready to move on to another project. Now she wouldn’t ever move on again. Would anyone find her down here? Or would whatever created this impenetrable darkness around her swallow her whole, leaving her fate a mystery?

She cried for her mother because she’d been putting off calling her for three days now, and now never would. She cried for her father because he’d been so proud when she told him she got a job from her first interview. She did not cry for herself, because her regret was already a live thing beneath her skin, too hot and heavy for tears. Something, that Thing, rumbled in the dark, and it was so far beyond too late to run, too late to…

A torch light, lithium-bright and blinding, cut across the room. Quick sharp steps echoed across the room as the owner of the torch made their way past Martha. Either they couldn’t hear the Thing, or didn’t care, because they didn’t stop until they reached the skeletal form of the Rusted Chair and after a moment of arranging the torch so it didn’t fall over, grabbed the tarp that had been left forgotten in the dark and swung it over the chair with a practiced flick.

Suddenly, the lights were on again, though dimly, as if the power had gone a bit wonky.

Martha’s rescuer snatched up her torch again and returned, her sensible heels beating a steady tattoo on the smooth marble floor.

“Honestly, there’s a reason you’re not supposed to do that without a spotter, come on, you can’t stay there.” She huffed briskly, her tone an odd mix of exasperation and bone-deep understanding. She stooped briefly help Martha to her feet – or perhaps less kindly and more correctly, haul Martha to her feet and prod her into motion. Martha, once standing, made an alarmed sound as she noted her scattered papers and made as if to go pick them up again, but evidently her rescuer wasn’t keen on sticking around. Martha was prodded – not entirely unkindly, but unrelentingly – back out of the Artefact Storage room.

The lock made a very encouraging thunking noise as it was engaged.

“So, let me guess – you’ve been down here loads of times to sleep in that stupid chair, and nothing ever happened, and one day your spotter can’t make it for some reason and you just decide to break protocol and come down here alone?” The exasperation hadn’t gone anywhere, but neither had the understanding, like this is something her rescuer had seen before. Like it was expected, somehow.

“I… yeah. Mike said he had food poisoning, couldn’t come in today.” Martha agreed, sheepishly. “Which is weird, you know, the guy has an iron gut, you wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen him eat.”

Her rescuer sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

“Well, that’s…” She paused, as if considering, weighing her words. “I… look, I’m sorry. I have no idea why we haven’t melted that thing down; it certainly hasn’t done us any good. Come on.” She turned to go upstairs, but Martha balked. She still felt scattered, her certainty at being dead crushed into absolute confusion about everything.

“Wait, what? What do you mean? Who are you?” She demands in a stuttering waterfall of words. “How did you even… what was that?”

Why isn’t she dead?

“My name’s Sasha, I used to be like you, in the practical research department. And now you’re going to be like me and transfer out of practical research, unless you really want that thing trying to snack on you again.” Martha shook her head, firm and not a little terrified at the idea. “You know that’s the fourth time this has happened? The first two times, people thought that the research teams had just quit, or run off, or been murdered or something. Third time,” Sasha gave a little wave, “The researcher who’d been in the chair just happened to have a torch in her bag the entire time, entirely luck, managed to keep the light going long enough to get out of the room. And since I wasn’t able to convince anyone that the chair really should be turned into so much scrap, you got a turn. Sorry about that, maybe they’ll listen this time.”

Martha felt that she should be able to come up with something better than short, completely open-ended questions at this point, but her brain was still scrambling to catch up with the fact that she hadn’t been eaten by a creature in the dark.

“Wha… who are they?”

“I mean, mostly Elias, honestly, you know how it is. You make a suggestion that someone should have made ages ago and you get a long speech about institutional traditions and not destroying the past and it’s entirely bullshit but what are you going to do?” Martha blinked at the sharp answer, and something in Sasha’s stance softened as she ushered them both into the small neat breakroom.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to make you some tea, and then I’ll get Rosie in here and she’ll have the forms to help get you set up with a new partner… or a transfer if you like. I don’t recommend transferring to the archives, though.” Sasha offered as she started rifling through the cabinets.

“Wait, I… I don’t need a new partner, Mike will be back on Monday, most likely.” Sasha paused, and turned, leaning against the cabinet, her face solemn. Martha stared back, a slowly creeping horror shivering down her spine. “He… he is fine… right?”

“Mike’s girlfriend reported him missing last night, we had a call from the police an hour ago. I heard Rosie talking about it up in reception, and made some assumptions, lucky for you.” Sasha explained, a bit bluntly, but with kind eyes. “My partner never came back, so… how do you take your tea?”

There was quite a lot of crying after that, of course, and quite a lot of paperwork, and an official reprimand from Rosie that’d been the mildest official reprimand Martha had ever heard of – she supposed no one wanted to add more punishment on to what was a horrible situation. She didn’t leave the institute, though she did debate it for a long time. However, now that she had full confirmation that the supernatural was real, how could she find a different job and just ignore the possibility? Not be part of the group that was trying to understand it, to come to grips with how it affected their daily lives?

But she did take Sasha’s advice and transfer out of Artefact Storage. Working as a librarian was certainly less hands-on, but in her estimation, it was entirely less likely to get her eaten by some sort of dark-monster. At least in the library there were windows out to the outside world.

Months later, when the fire alarms went off, Martha had bolted from the building along with the rest of the team from the library, ushered onto the green across the street as they waited to see if it was a false alarm or a fire or something else.

Everyone who had ever been in Artefact Storage suspected it was Something Else, though the theories as to what it could be were impossibly varied. The archival staff were the last to emerge and the only ones to come out bleeding, but they all did make it. Martha was glad to see Sasha, and tried to send her a friendly wave, but Sasha must not have seen it. Martha continued to tell herself, as the weeks wore on, that the trauma of being chased down by a bunch of murderous worms would make anyone a bit distant. A bit strange. It was nothing.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Detective Basira Hussain thumped the last file down on her desk and sat down heavily. The pool of light cast by the lamp seemed a bit forlorn in the nearly abandoned station office, but she was determined to at least make some headway in this mess tonight, if only so that she could convince Daisy they didn’t need to hang around the Institute any more. They’d interviewed everyone, which turned out to be a far more daunting prospect than they’d bargained for. The openly traumatized archival staff they’d known about, the smooth operator of a head boss they’d had plenty of warning for, but it turned out to be the run-of-the-mill workers that’d gone off on wild tangents. ‘Do you know anyone from the archival staff? Have you seen anything suspicious while working at the Institute?’ She’d ask, and she’d be presented with these stories, long-winded stories that barely pertained to the horror that was Jane Prentiss or the death of the previous Head Archivist. Some of them she’d even consider a pack of lies, if she hadn’t already been Sectioned.

The only people who had mentioned the tunnels were the three members of the Archival staff who’d used them to try and escape the worms, even though it seemed they were extensive. Barely anyone had known the worms were much of a thing beyond a nuisance, something that caused a dull sort of horror when she remembered the stories that had emerged from that hospital that had the misfortune of trying to treat Prentiss before she’d gone completely feral.

No, just stories about how things were over all more than a bit spooky, how the staff seemed to just be dealing with it without acknowledging it really – maybe the reason they didn’t notice the worms is everyone’s weird-o-meter was completely useless in a place that collected weird as a business model.

“Hey, you still down here?” Daisy’s footsteps were light, and purposefully so. That usually wasn’t a good sign, Basira knew. Meant someone had caught her attention. Basira had some guesses as to who, but it never did any good to try and argue.

“Yeah, thought I might try to make some headway with this.” Basira waved a hand at her massive stack of files as Daisy perched on the edge of her desk, one foot swinging in idle kinetic motion. “Tragically no one was nice enough to stand up and say ‘yes, it was me, I shot the ancient old lady archivist and left her down in the mysterious tunnels filled with worms, take me away officers’, which I find rather rude.”

Daisy laughed, a sharp bark of a laugh, as she picked up one of the files and thumbed through it.

“You even interviewed the trade people?” She asked, raising an eyebrow, “What, are you that bored?”

“Have you even heard of being thorough? That guy spent weeks down in the archives, not that he wanted to tell me much about it. Spent a solid hour ranting about being lost in the shelving somehow.” Basira griped, leaning back in her chair since it was pretty obvious Daisy was intent on hanging around. “He completely changed jobs, you know, took me forever to track him down. Works on a farm in Lincolnshire.”

“Oh my god, did you have to go hunt him down amongst the pigs?” Daisy asked, sounding entirely too tickled by the prospect.  
“It was cows, actually.” Basira sniffed, though she grinned at Daisy’s cackling laugh.

“Aw man, all of that effort and all you got was someone who is absolutely piss-poor at directions. See, now here I think you’re overlooking the obvious answer – that Bouchard character sets off all kinds of red flags.”

Basira already knew Daisy had her eye on someone, so it really wasn’t much of a surprise, but still.

“Daisy…” She started, but she was over-run before she could even get the word properly out.

“You know and I know there is something decidedly off about that guy, don’t even try to hide it. I don’t know what it is yet, but I will.” She promised, as if she could just go in and tear out the secrets by force.

Heavens know it wouldn’t take much temptation for Daisy to do just that.

“Procedure states…” She tried again, but Daisy just hopped off her desk, waving off the protest.

“Nah, the higher-ups just want this to go away. A missing person who turned out to be dead not two hundred yards from where her bloody desk had been found months before? Yeah, that’s an embarrassment, and not one anyone is happy about. They’ll want this ended quick. But!” Daisy turned, quick, and used the heel of her boot to push Basira’s chair back a few feet from the desk. It rolled on protesting, squeaking wheels.

“Tonight, we are not doing that. Tonight is pub quiz night, and you’re buying first round since you insisted on the wrong answer that caused us to lose last week.” Daisy insisted. “Come on, where’s your coat?”

Basira tried arguing, she really did – she had work to do, she was a professional, there was long-delayed justice to ensure… None of it worked, really. Trying to argue with Daisy was like trying to argue with the weather – entirely futile. She supposed Gertrude Robinson had already been dead for months – one more night really wasn’t going to make the woman more dead.


End file.
